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NPR's Alex Chadwick talks with Chris Douridas of member station KCRW in Santa Monica, Calif., about up-and-coming musician Ray LaMontagne, a former shoe factory worker with a distinctive singing voice and signature songwriting style who now has a hit debut album, Trouble.

Grammy-winning singer and composer Cassandra Wilson has made a career out of using her jazz and blues skills to transform pop songs. On her latest album, Glamoured, Wilson applies her rich, husky voice to a variety of musical genres. NPR's Michelle Mercer has a review.

Mike Wexler is a singer-songwriter from Brooklyn, NY with a beautifully textured voice. His debut full-length CD is called Sun Wheel. It's a carefully crafted collection of songs mixing folk with psychedelia, a sound Wexler says is inspired in part by the music of Robert Wyatt and Pink Floyd.

Trumpeter Christian Scott is a relatively new voice in jazz music, but he is already challenging the genre's conventional thinking. Scott has picked a fight with some famous jazz purists, and he's holding his ground. Tony Cox speaks with Scott about jazz music's past, present, and future.

On his latest album, Devils & Dust, rocker Bruce Springsteen strips down, musically and spiritually, using his lone voice on spare acoustic songs to explore themes of spirituality, of moral uncertainty and loss. In a two-part interview, the singer talks about his life, songwriting and new album.

Led by Megan Hickey and her '40s lap-steel guitar, the band addresses themes of heartbreak, joy and alienation. With a sweet, strong singing voice — she's been compared to Beth Orton, Gillian Welch and Mazzy Star's Hope Sandoval — Hickey delves into personal material on Wire Waltz.

The Coup realizes what the best blues and soul artists always knew: Focus on everyday people, and you'll never run out of stories. For nearly 15 years, the duo has provided one of the lone voices speaking to the trials and tribulations of working-class, inner-city black life.

The band formerly known as Alabama 3 strips down its roots-meets-dance sound with just two acoustic guitars and voices. The trio plays and talks about its Sopranos success song and plays a country death ballad version of Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart."

Since 1996, Sunny Day Real Estate's Jeremy Enigk has experienced band break-ups, reunions and a widely publicized conversion to Christianity. What remains is a man who's grown up and brought his lovely voice and sweet melodies out from behind layers of blaring bluster.

With her tart, no-nonsense voice, Mable John deserved to be a star like her brother Willie, who sang "Fever" before Peggy Lee. But Mable John never quite made it, though it sure wasn't because of her singing. Case in point: "Able Mable."

Director Frank Oz started his career as the voice of Miss Piggy, the Cookie Monster and other Muppets. As a director, he had made star-powered movies such as Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. His latest film, Death at a Funeral, is a dark comedy with a cast not well known outside the U.K.

Countless books and films have been made about Abraham Lincoln, but not many have been told in his voice. Jerome Charyn's latest novel, a sort of fictional autobiography, does just that. Charyn spoke with NPR's Scott Simon about Lincoln's poetry, depression, and fictionalizing a life.

Sandy Denny became the queen of British folk rock when she joined the band Fairport Convention in 1968. Her fans included Robert Plant and Nina Simone. Denny was a skilled songwriter with a powerful and expressive voice, yet today many people don't recognize her name.

Soft and insistent, breathy and sometimes wordless, she doesn't have the voice of Ella, or Sarah, or Betty. But she doesn't need it; on her third album, she's got plenty of that slippery, you-know-it-when-you-hear-it quality often abbreviated "musicality."

The late Ellen Willis was the first pop-music critic for The New Yorker. A new anthology, Out of the Vinyl Deeps, collects her thoughts on Dylan, Joplin and The Rolling Stones, among others. Critic Ken Tucker says the anthology "resurrects a nearly lost, vital, invaluable voice" in pop music.

Driven by Zolani Mahola's powerhouse voice, the band is one of the most talked about musical acts out of post-apartheid South Africa. Although its latest album features an American producer, its desire to hang onto the past while establishing a place in the future is decidedly South African.

An Irish-born singer with a husky voice, Katell Keineg remains virtually unknown. Spend a moment with her 1994 album O Seasons O Castles, and it's hard not to be puzzled by the disc's failure to reach a large audience: Its wildly inspired songs aspire to the sprawl and sweep of epic novels.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s young, mostly left-wing students and radicals found a voice on FM community radio across the country. Ken Sleeman was the general manager of one such station, WGTB-FM in Washington DC. He shares some of his recordings from that time.

Jenny Lewis has the clear voice and honest melodicism of a guitar-strumming angel. But she is so good to look at and so forthright about her sexuality that some of Rilo Kiley's serious-minded natural audience suspect she is a pop starlet on the make, like Rihanna or the pitiable Britney Spears.

Meshell Ndegeocello has released five critically acclaimed albums since 1993 that featured socially provocative lyrics driven by a solid groove. On her latest CD, Ndegeocello leaves her husky voice behind and lets her bass guitar take center stage. Felix Contreras reports.